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Here is a video by Just Have a Think that summarizes what happened at COP26 in Glasgow. It was published on November 21, 2021.

It’s too late for incremental change. By mobilising just 25% of people, we can flip social attitudes towards the climate

This article was written by George Monbiot and was published in The Guardian on November 14, 2021.

Recently, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) was held in Scotland. In our latest North American Tracker, we asked Canadians and Americans about several topics discussed at the conference, including their perspectives on climate change. We also asked Canadians to share how they feel about several of the Canadian government’s climate change policies.

Here is the full report issued on November 8, 2021.

This article was written by Adam Radwanski and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 15, 2021.

Future climate-policy conferences will need to evolve, to talk less about what countries want to do and more about the nuts and bolts of how they will do it

COP26 was a qualified success, giving a shot of momentum to the fight against climate change at a moment when it was desperately needed. It was also a lesson in how the annual United Nations climate summit has to change going forward – including by shifting focus to the hard work of policy implementation and finding new ways to bridge global divides – if it’s to play a meaningful role in saving the planet.

That’s not the message you’ll hear from proponents of a pair of duelling narratives, which opposing camps were pushing well before the conference’s negotiations ended Saturday.

The host British government and others desperate to claim victory will pronounce this a huge step forward, with the world now united in common climate purpose.

The Greta Thunberg-led protesters and other activists who always considered the whole thing an exercise in greenwashing will insist that it produced nothing but hollow declarations meant to make jetsetting elites feel good about themselves.

Both of those takes dramatically oversimplify things, as was evident from the conference’s mixed-bag final agreement.

The text includes resolutions that will translate into clear progress, such as stronger transparency in how countries deliver on their national emissions-reduction pledges, and sets an expectation that countries will quickly update those pledges to put them in line with keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Elsewhere it falls somewhat short, with explicit language around ending fossilfuel subsidies and getting off coal that was watered down at the last minute because of objections by India (and more quietly China). It recognizes the need for funding to cover loss and damage from climatechange impacts developing countries are already experiencing, but does not include the specific financial commitments those countries sought in that regard.

Meanwhile, negotiators appear to have finally landed on rules for a carbon-credittrading market, after years of failed attempts. That’s a breakthrough that, in theory, should help meet emissions targets by allowing countries that exceed theirs to sell credits to those falling short. But there were concerns from environmentalists that some of the compromises made to get there could weaken the overall effort.

Most countries’ representatives on Saturday expressed that they weren’t totally happy with the agreement, but that it was best not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good – a fitting recognition that something positive needed to come from Glasgow, in order to move the ball forward.

But equally important was what happened over the previous two weeks, at a sprawling conference that has evolved to become about much more than just the highly technical negotiations at its core.

It was never realistic to expect an international gathering to put firm emissions-reducing policies in place, since that hard work mostly has to be done at domestic levels. What the conference could do was compel new collaborations, exert pressure on governments to make broad new commitments, and generally build a sense of climate urgency – especially important at a moment when economies are rebuilding from the COVID-19 pandemic, and when short-term crises around energy supply threaten to distract from longerterm clean-economy transition.

In many ways, COP26 delivered on that potential.

The positive developments began with the new national emissions-reduction commitments that most participant countries (albeit with some notable exceptions) made at the conference’s outset, or before it even began. For countries that already had somewhat ambitious goals, this meant raising previous targets – in Canada’s case, from 30 per cent to 40 per cent below 2005 emissions levels by 2030. For other countries, it meant setting targets for the first time. India, for instance, set a relatively modest one of net-zero emissions by 2070. For almost every country that made a pledge, it was fear of being embarrassed by turning up here emptyhanded that was the impetus.

More progress came nearer the conference’s end, with a surprising co-operation declaration from the United States and China. While rather broad in its language, the agreement to stay in close contact on a range of climate policy areas – including through the creation of a new working group that is to meet regularly – is badly needed at a time when there is otherwise so much ill will between the two superpowers. (It also somewhat diminished the common perception that China was missing in action here, although the country’s failure to raise the ambition of its national emissions targets was still disappointing.)

The value of the summit’s peer pressure was also reflected in agreements between groups of countries, involving environmental commitments they probably would not yet have made on their own. The jury is still out on how some of them – such as a pact by over 100 countries to end deforestation by 2030, which Indonesia’s government signed on to and then days later hedged on – will hold up. Others, including an agreement that Canada joined to end billions of dollars in international financing for fossil-fuel projects by the end of 2022, represent specific and meaningful action from which it will be extremely difficult to back away. And a global pledge to cut methane leaks 30 per cent by 2030 cemented this as the conference where that relatively easy way of reducing total greenhouse gas emissions got the attention it deserves.

Crucially, there was at least some movement – though not nearly enough – on bridging the gap between the developed and developing worlds, in terms of investment in both mitigating climate change and adapting to its unavoidable impacts. Having to face up to representatives of poorer countries, richer governments belatedly made progress toward assembling the US$100-billion in annual climate financing they previously promised. And they had to start considering stronger future commitments, reflected in the final text’s language about aiming to double adaptation financing.

And while it’s easy to scoff at the somewhat inflated US$130-trillion in green financing announced in the first week by Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, desire to make a good showing here surely did accelerate the pace at which some private sector assets are being committed to non-emitting investments. And there may be more scrutiny of those commitments – more pressure to subsequently prove it’s not just greenwashing – than if the financing promises had been made in more piecemeal fashion elsewhere.

Taken together, it amounts to momentum. And that was the best result that could reasonably have been hoped for coming out of Glasgow.

But there are clearly some corrections that will be needed for future editions of the conference – ways that COP needs to evolve, next year and beyond, if it’s to build off the positives achieved here.

A good start would be to recognize that the desire to show progress has resulted in a few too many of those mid-conference announcements by groups of countries making shared pledges. It’s a situation that came to a head on a day when there were multiple announcements of coalitions to get off coal, at least two of them spearheaded by Britain, with overlap in members and different degrees of ambition in their promises.

These agreements are not legally binding; their power comes from getting enough attention to be morally and politically compelling. If delegates at the conference have trouble telling them apart, let alone anyone in the outside world, there is a risk of them being easily forgotten when everyone goes home. So a little more focus on quality over quantity, next time, would do everyone a favour.

There should also be no ignoring that, despite the degree of progress on climate finance, delegates from developing countries were continually frustrated throughout the conference by a lack of representation and clout relative to Europe, North America and a few other select places.

That was made worse by COVID-19 disproportionately affecting poorer countries and impeding their delegates’ ability to travel. The fact that next year’s COP27 will take place in Egypt might help give the Global South more voice. But the UN still needs to consider how to level the power balance at these events, to give countries facing the worst of climate change’s consequences an equal voice.

Perhaps the most important and trickiest of the ways COP needs to evolve is by creating an imperative to move from setting goals to actually making good on them.

Added ambition will still be required, in coming years, from countries that have not yet made emissions-reductions pledges in line with keeping global warming to a non-catastrophic level. But if there was already public skepticism about the credibility of pledges this time, it will only mount if countries keep turning up in future years talking about what they want to do instead of how they will do it.

Since COP is not where policies are actually put in place, there is only so much it can achieve. At minimum, though, its future programs will need to increasingly focus on countries sharing lessons and supports, along with more specifically targeted international financing schemes. Transparency mechanisms will have to keep being ratcheted up. And future pledges, including in the various multicountry agreements, will have to start getting more specific about actual measures to be taken.

The more such growth happens, the better the chance that we look back on COP26 as a positive pivot point in the struggle for the planet’s future.

That will depend, too, on what leaders, officials and executives do when they get home from Glasgow. The momentum is there; the ultimate test for COP26 will be how long it lasts.

Most countries’ representatives on Saturday expressed that they weren’t totally happy with the agreement, but that it was best not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good – a fitting recognition that something positive needed to come from Glasgow, in order to move the ball forward.

This article was written by Phoebe Weston and was published in The Guardian on November 1, 2021.

Why protecting seagrass is crucial in the fight to heal the climate, save fisheries and support biodiversity

• The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition)
• 29 Oct 2021
• STORY AND PHOTOS BY SHANE GROSS, SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

This story and photos were produced by Shane Gross and were published in the Globe & Mail on October 29, 2021.

As I looked over the side of the boat into Cowichan Bay off Vancouver Island, I was hit by a wave of dread. The water looked like mud. There was zero visibility. Decades ago, this used to be a seagrass “meadow,” but humans destroyed it by building a massive seaport and through logging. Around the world, seagrass loss rates are now comparable with those reported for mangroves, coral reefs and tropical rain forests, making seagrass meadows among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, according to environmental organization Project Seagrass.

In clear water, seagrasses can stretch for miles.

Cloudy water blocks the light they need to survive.

For five years, the SeaChange Marine Conservation Society along with Cowichan Tribes and community volunteers have been working to re-establish these historic underwater eelgrass meadows, which I’ve been sent to photograph.

Eelgrass is one of about 70 species of seagrass, which are flowering plants that are different from seaweed and algae, found throughout the world’s coastlines. Around the world, countries are heeding the calls of experts who are increasingly discussing how important seagrass is for a long list of reasons.

In Cowichan Bay, seagrass is important for salmon, which use it as shelter during their fry stage after swimming downriver. Ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November, the tiny country of Seychelles pledged to protect 100 per cent of its mangroves and seagrass ecosystem in its climate action plan.

Seagrass, mangroves and salt marshes – known collectively as “blue carbon” – are highly efficient carbon sinks. Seagrasses are able to absorb carbon an estimated 35 times faster than forests on land. By keeping carbon “locked up” and preventing it from

entering the atmosphere, seagrass meadows are vital to mitigating climate change.

But you can’t photograph what you can’t see. The commercial divers I was here to capture use full face masks so they can communicate with the surface. After reaching the seabed, one diver, sounding like an astronaut calling back to Houston, said: “We’ve got about 10 feet of visibility down here.” A wave of relief washed over me. Luckily, only the surface layer had no visibility. It wasn’t exactly crystalclear water underneath, but it was enough to photograph.

Suited up and camera in hand, I dove in.

It was fascinating to watch the small team of divers dig into the barren, silty seabed and drop a batch of 10 seagrass shoots, each about one-metre long, into a hole and cover it over before moving on to the next batch. They laid out their underwater garden in clean rows of bright green vegetation, which will fill in over time. It didn’t take long for schools of fish and crabs to move back into this habitat, which had been missing for decades.

As I climbed back on the boat, I spotted a sea lion splashing and thrashing not too far away on the surface as she ripped apart a salmon. It brought to mind the community effort to support the dwindling salmon populations and all the other creatures that depend on a healthy seagrass habitat.

Not all restoration projects work. They can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s much more efficient to protect what nature we still have, but under the right circumstances, restoration can yield encouraging results.

As SeaChange executive director Nikki Wright puts it: “If we did things right on land, there wouldn’t be much need for restoration, but projects like this are rejuvenating and energizing when you have such high community engagement like we do [in] Cowichan.”

This opinion was written by Mark Jaccard and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 25, 2021.

Distinguished professor at Simon Fraser University and a lead author on climate policy with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

In the recent federal election campaign, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party promised to reduce Canada’s greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 40 per cent by 2030. But now that the party has been re-elected to office, climate policy experts note that Canadians will know within six months if the Liberals were sincere. A massive GHG reduction in just nine years can only happen if the government immediately implements its key policies.

The most obvious one is the federal carbon tax. The government must finalize its scheduled increase from today’s $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide to $170 in 2030. This will incentivize businesses and consumers to reduce their burning of climate-disrupting gasoline, diesel, natural gas and coal.

The federal government refers to its carbon tax as a “backstop” because it applies only in provinces that lack an equivalent policy. This co-operative approach is laudable. But the provincial policies must truly be equivalent, and confirmed as such by independent experts.

Trade-exposed industries, like steel and cement, must also face the rising carbon tax, albeit with partial exemptions and subsidy support to ensure their production costs don’t rise so much that they are outcompeted by companies operating in climate-laggard countries.

But the critical industrial policy will be the Liberals’ promise to cap and then reduce emissions from oil and gas production.

Since some oil and gas companies have already committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, the obvious policy to pursue to achieve the Liberals’ promise is a regulation under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) that requires GHG emissions from oil and gas production to decline from today’s levels to zero by 2050, with an interim reduction of 15 to 20 per cent by 2030. This, in concert with the promised regulation to reduce methane emissions by 75 per cent, will ensure that Canadian industry emissions fall substantially – which is essential, if we hope to meet our ambitious 40-per-cent national target.

But note that the oil and gas cap is on GHG emissions, not on production. As this industry adopts zero-emission technologies, production levels may stay constant or even rise. If, however, oil and gas production in Canada does decline over the next decades, the main cause will be global progress on climate and the resulting decline in fossil-fuel demand.

GHG reduction requires a dramatic increase in electricity generation as we electrify transportation, buildings, and industrial processes. In future, all electricity must be produced by zero-emission sources. Yet while current federal and provincial policies are forcing the closure or conversion of conventional coal plants, some provincial governments have been supporting investments in natural gas-fired generation, which also emits GHGs.

The Liberals need to live up to their promise of a 100-per-cent net-zero emitting electricity system by 2035 to achieve their 2030 and 2050 targets. The federal government must therefore reduce the allowed electricity emissions intensity under its CEPA regulations to prevent more construction of natural gas generating plants and ensure the retrofit of existing plants with carbon capture and storage.

Transportation is also critical. The rising carbon tax helps transition our cars, vans, pick-ups and SUVs to electric, hydrogen and biofuel options. But rapid success will require a national zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. This policy would compel vehicle sellers to achieve ZEV sales targets in specified years – mandating at least 50 per cent of all vehicles sold to be zero-emission by 2030. For quick implementation, the Liberals can copy the ZEV mandates already adopted in Quebec and B.C., again as a regulation under the CEPA.

For years, the Liberal government has also been developing a clean fuel standard that requires a declining carbon intensity in the production and use of gasoline, diesel and heating oil. With a ZEV mandate, the rising carbon tax and the oil and gas emissions cap, the government can increase the ambition of its clean fuel standard from 13 per cent reduction in carbon intensity to 30 to 40 per cent by 2030. Without this adjustment, the clean fuel standard won’t contribute much.

Overall, this is an ambitious policy agenda. But the Liberals knew this when they asked Canadian voters to believe in their climate sincerity and their GHG target.

Now, with a minority government, it is up to the other federal parties to demonstrate their own sincerity on the climate change file by supporting quick implementation of these policies – and for the government to keep its word. In a climate emergency, that’s what Canadians expect.

This article was published in the Globe & Mail on October 15, 2021.

A global energy crunch is expected to boost oil demand by 500,000 barrels a day and could stoke inflation and slow the world’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

Oil and natural gas prices have soared to multiyear highs recently, sending power prices surging to record levels as widespread energy shortages hit Asia and Europe.

“Higher energy prices are also adding to inflationary pressures that, along with power outages, could lead to lower industrial activity and a slowdown in the economic recovery,” the IEA said.

As a result, global oil demand next year is now projected to recover to prepandemic levels, the agency said. It made upward revisions to its demand forecasts for this year by 170,000 b/d, or a total addition of 5.5 million for the year, and by 210,000 b/d in 2022, or a total addition of 3.3 million.

An upsurge in demand in the past quarter led to the biggest draw on oil products stocks in eight years, it said.

This article was written by Gloria Henriquez and was published by Global News on September 24, 2021.

This article was written and published by the Energy Mix on September 16, 2021.

This story includes details about the impacts of climate change that may be difficult for some readers. If you are feeling overwhelmed by this crisis situation here is a list of resources on how to cope with fears and feelings about the scope and pace of the climate crisis.

The effects of climate change may well escalate faster than expected, thanks to climate policies that won’t go far enough, fast enough to reduce warming and avert catastrophic consequences, warns essayist and activist George Monbiot in a recent post for The Guardian.

“If Earth systems cross critical thresholds, everything we did and everything we were—the learning, the wisdom, the stories, the art, the politics, the love, the hate, the anger, and the hope—will be reduced to stratigraphy,” Monbiot writes, referring to the academic discipline that studies geologic layers across time. 

The recent science assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes clear that warming temperatures will push environmental systems to “tipping points,” where additional increments of greenhouse gas emissions can shift the structure of one of the Earth’s natural systems to produce a cascade of climate impacts out of proportion to the emissions themselves. While current climate plans could function “in a simple system like a washbasin, in which you can close the tap until the inflow is less than the outflow,” Monbiot explains, these plans “are less likely to work in complex systems, such as the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.” 

The consequences of pursuing ineffective plans will be irreversible, says Monbiot. And he fears that, in some cases, it may already be too late.

“The old assumption that the Earth’s tipping points are a long way off is beginning to look unsafe,” he writes.

Signs that those thresholds are fast approaching include the weakening Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), melting glaciers and polar ice caps, and thawing permafrost. The systemic shifts following these changes are felt through the kind of extreme weather, floods, and fires that plagued the world this past summer. 

The current responses to these crises are not enough, Monbiot finds, and the commonly stated national climate target of reaching net-zero by 2050 is beginning to look “neither rational nor safe.” Many climate plans focus on technology to capture or absorb carbon, despite the IPCC report’s finding that large-scale use of this strategy is “subject to multiple feasibility and sustainability constraints.” 

That means natural systems will become the only option for carbon absorption after continued emissions surpass the limits of carbon capture technology. And there is already “not enough land in the world to meet the promises to offset emissions that companies and governments have already made.”

At present, he says, climate policies are projected to lead to the planet warming by 2.9°C—far above the 1.5°C target that would largely avoid catastrophe. That means the remaining hope is to reach net-zero by both decarbonizing the economy and absorbing atmospheric carbon as fast as possible. However, Monbiot says, climate policies are being undermined by slow implementation and a lack of integrity. 

“Many of the promises seem designed to be broken,” he writes.